Analysing and teaching meaning 3 SSIS Lazio Lesson

Analysing and teaching meaning (3) SSIS Lazio - Lesson 3 prof. Hugo Bowles January 2007 1

Lesson 3 - part 1 Dictionaries and other resources 2

The Criteria of a Dictionary • Formal Criteria: q q n A list of the headwords (entries) Information about each headword Functional Criteria q q q A reference work (to provide information about difficult technical words) A storeroom for a language (to find out what once existed and what exists today) A code of law (to decide whether to accept or reject regional, historical or social variants). 3

Criteria regarding content n n n n Spelling Lexical meaning Word class Pronunciation Stress Etymology Collocations etc. 4

The history of English Dictionaries n n n 1604: A Table Alphabetical; Robert Cawdrey (2, 500 words) 1616: English Expositor; John Bullokar 1623: English Dictionarie; Henry Cockeram 1656: New World of English Words; Edward Phillips 1702: A New English Dictionary; John Kersey (28, 000 words) 1721: Universal Etymological English Dictionary; Nathaniel Bailey (40, 000 words) 5

n. Dictionary of the English Language n 1755 nby Samuel Johnson n. Two volumes n 40, 000 entries 6

n n n An American Dictionary of the English Language 1828 by Noah Webster Two volumes 70, 000 entries 7

Oxford, Longman, and Collins n 1928: Oxford English Dictionary (12 volumes, 15, 487 pp. , 252, 200 entries) n 1968: Longman’s English Larousse n 1987: Collins Cobuild English Language Dictionary 8

The Corpus Revolution: Word-watching Compiling a corpus n Corpus: A collection of written or spoken materials. n The sources: magazine articles, brochures, newspapers, lectures, sermons, broadcasts, chapters on novels, etc. 9

The Survey of English Usage n n n The first large corpus of English-language data, compiled in the 1960 s. Directed by Randolph Quirk Based at University College London It consists of 1, 000 words taken from 200 texts of spoken and written materials. The texts were transcribed by hand stored on index cards. In the 1970 s the spoken component was made electronically available by Jan Svartvik of Lund University 10

Some important corpora n n n The first computerized corpus: the Brown University Corpus of American English, Providence, Rhode Island, USA, in 1960 s. The Lancaster–Olso/Bergen (LOB) Corpus of British English, in 1970 s. Collins–Birmingham University International Language Database (COBUILD), in 1980 s. The corpus reached 20 million words. Longman/Lancaster English Language Corpus, in 1980 s, using both American and British English, comprises 30 million words. Bank of English (Birmingham University), started in 1991 and reached 450 million words in 2002. 11

The British National Corpus (BNC) n n A collaboration between Longman, Oxford University Press, Chambers Harrap (Oxford University Computing Service), The University of Lancaster, and the British Library. Compilation from 1991 until 1994 = 100 million words. Particular attention has been paid to the internal balance of the corpus. 12

The International Corpus of English n n n Based at the University College London Began in 1980 s By 1991, 20 countries agreed to take part: n Australia, Cameroon, Canada, Caribbean, Fiji, Ghana, Hong Kong, India, Ireland, Kenya, Malawi, New Zealand, Nigeria, Philippines, Sierra Leone, Singapore, South Africa, Tanzania, UK, and USA. 13

Types of dictionary (1) n Standard monolingual n n Learners monolingual (usuall with pictures andstudy guides) n n Thesaurus n Oxford, Longman, Chambers, Webster Oxford Advanced Learners, Cambridge International, Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English Roget, Longman Lexicon 14

Types of dictionary (2) n Bilingual (with translation) n Concept dictionaries n Thematic dictionaries (cuture, quotations) n Technical dictionaries n Zanichelli, Garzanti ecc. n Cambridge Wordroutes, Word Activators 15

Dictionary formats n Book form - pocket/full-size n Online n CD-ROM 16

Other sources of lexical information n Concordances n Glossaries n Parallel texts 17

Learners dictionary advantages n n n More information - lexical, collocational, grammatical, pronunciation Better information - based on language corpora of English in use Better learning - written in English 18

Learners dictionary disadvantages n No translation n Very few technical words 19

Bilingual dictionary advantages and disadvantages n DISADVANTAGES gives a quick translation n can give a quick misunderstanding can give a quick understanding n doesn’t help learning processes n ADVANTAGES 20

Collocation dictionaries, concordances and glossaries n n n The advantage of a collocation dictionary is to find collocations which are not availablee in a dictionary A concordance from a corpus can also be used to find collocations or new ways of expressing a concept Glossaries are compiled and used by specialists and are only useful for translation students working on advanced lexis 21

Some advice n Choose a learners dictionary which really helps your students’ lexical problems and which you like using as a teacher n A good bilingual dictionary is also extremely useful but make sure you use it for translation only 22

Lesson 3 - part 2 Using resources and materials with students 23

Knowing the meaning of a word - what it implies for students n n n Decoding and recognising the form Understanding the meaning Remembering the word Producing the word Using the word 24

1. Decoding and recognising the form n Read and relate written form to spoken form n Listen to and identify a word n Morphological understanding of roots and affixes (word-formation) 25

2. Understanding the meaning n what the word refers to n the connotation of the word n the style and register of the word n its discourse function 26

3. Remembering the word n Meaning (receptive) n Form (productive) 27

4. Producing the word n Spoken form (pronunciation) n Written form (spelling) 28

5. Using the word n Accurately (grammar, syntax) n Appropriately (style register, collocation) 29

Using a dictionary for reading n n Look at the context of the word Use the context to decide on the grammar of the word (is it a verb/noun? Use the context to make a hypothesis about the meaning Use the dictionary to check your hypothesis 30

Using a dictionary for speaking n n Know the phonetic alphabet (i. e. you need to be able to produce the sound of the symbol) Look up the phonetic spelling of a word Produce the sound of the word by reading the phonetic spelling or by listening to/repeating the sound (CD/online dictionaries) Practice the word in isolation and in a stream of speech 31

Post-dictionary work You need a system to help students record and remember words: n Alphabetical order n Word maps n Words organised by topics n Different types of list (idioms, phonetic lists of words with same sound) n Lists with translations 32

Dictionaries n See the list and analysis of dictionaries and software in the article on lexicography 33